


cat’s cradle

by Mythopoeia



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [312]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Amputation Trauma, Angst, Because Fingolfin and Mae Both Love Their Boy, Childhood Memories, Family, Fingolfin Being a Best Dad, Fluff, From chapter 5 of imagine a room a sudden glow, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Kittens, Missing Scene, Mithrim, Mostly about Fingon, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Timeline: shortly before Christmas, also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27003037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/pseuds/Mythopoeia
Summary: “Was that a dream you have had before?” Fingolfin asked, as mildly as he could. Maedhros blinked, and released the basin to rake his hand back through his sweaty hair. His trembling was calming, slowly.“Oh,” he said, with a brave lift of his chin, “yes—what I can remember of it. I think I have dreamed everything Icandream, many times over, now. You would think that I could bear it better, with that taken into consideration. ”(Fingon,Maedhros had begged his nightmare, very clearly.Fingon, no.)
Relationships: Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [312]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	cat’s cradle

**Author's Note:**

> This can be read as a standalone little fic, but for full context it is a missing scene for Chapter 5 of TolkienGirl’s Fingon and Maedhros-centric fic _imagine a room, a sudden glow_. Thanks to all of you lovely people for continuing to read, support, and enjoy this series! Your comments on our work have really helped carry me through a truly terrible year, and I am very grateful always.
> 
> *
> 
> _Fingon returned in the morning to find his father dozing, seated awkwardly at the edge of the bed, with Maedhros’ head against his knee._ -imagine a room, a sudden glow

“Good heavens,” said Fingolfin.

Immediately, he regretted speaking. Feanor his brother had been proud—and _pride_ itself was, in honesty, somehow too kind a word for Feanor’s version of that deadliest sin—and that pride outlived him in all his sons. Even little Amras, not so little now, who refused to so much as ask after Argon. Even musical Maglor, with his reluctance to share Maedhros with anyone else.

Even Maedhros himself, who was still retching into the basin Fingolfin had thrust hastily into his lap. 

Fingon had warned, when he reluctantly departed for his own bed, that Maedhros sometimes was sick, if it was a very bad nightmare. Before he shook Maedhros by the shoulder to rouse him, Fingolfin had had the presence of mind to pick up the basin from the floor by his chair and to hold it ready. When Maedhros had wrenched awake, wheezing for breath and sweating, lurching towards the edge of the bed, Fingolfin had been only just in time.

At last, Maedhros looked up. His thin hand clutched the rim of the basin, white-knuckled; his handless right arm was pressed hard against his ribs, in a kind of miserable, aborted hug. His eyes were red, his face very pale in the lamplight.

“I am sorry,” he rasped. “Uncle.”

He was trembling, a little. Fingolfin could feel it beneath his hand, as he rubbed soothing circles between his nephew’s sharp shoulder blades. It was the way he had helped soothe Anaire’s breathing, when such care had been needed: slow, rhythmic work with the palm of his hand. The familiar motion was a narrow blade of grief, sharp and quick; yet, despite the grief, it was a kind of comfort, too. It was something he had not lost.

“Was that a dream you have had before?” He asked, as mildly as he could. Maedhros blinked, and released the basin to rake his hand back through his sweaty hair. His trembling was calming, slowly. 

“Oh,” he said, with a brave lift of his chin, “yes—what I can remember of it. I think I have dreamed everything I _can_ dream, many times over, now. You would think that I could bear it better, with that taken into consideration. ”

“Are you not bearing it better?” Fingolfin asked, gently. Maedhros considered.

“Perhaps,” he said, and laughed, shakily. “For I did not fight _you_ , this time.”

It was a deeply unsettling laugh. He rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his left hand, turning his head away.

_Fingon_ , he had wailed, in his dream. Indistinct, choking on his own air, terrified, piteous: _Fingon_ —

Fingon had said Maedhros should be wakened, if he seemed to be having distressing dreams.

_He speaks sometimes now, in his nightmares,_ Fingon had murmured in the hall, his expression pained. He had swayed a little, looking as though he was thinking hard to put the right words together, one hand pressed against the wall, the other to his aching brow. He had refused to take any medicine for his headache, and Fingolfin knew it was because their stock of pain relievers was running very low. _He says—terrible things. You should not have to hear them._

_Fingon,_ Maedhros had begged his nightmare, very clearly. _Fingon, no._

“Do you think it safe for me to set this aside?” Fingolfin asked, gesturing towards the basin. “Or would you rather keep it close a little longer?”

Maedhros made a peculiar, mortified face, and shook his head.

Fingolfin lowered it carefully to the floor, pushed safely beneath the bed where it could stay out of the way until it was emptied in the morning.

“There we are,” he announced, with a smile. “Very good. Now let us get you back to sleep quick as we can, lest Fingon accuse me of keeping you awake while he was away. Yes?”

Maedhros smiled, faintly, and nodded.

He did not seem upset, to hear Fingon’s name.

“I did not carry on half as much when I was actually—there. So foolish,” he said, with a strange sort of desperate flippancy, looking up at Fingolfin with pleading eyes. There was a bitterness in his mouth.

“I should not be so affected, now that it is all over. Damn coward. Crying over—nothing.”

“You are not a coward, Maedhros,” said Fingolfin, calmly. “And such thoughts should be saved for daylight, not the dark. Come, take a little water, and let us get you comfortable again.”

Maedhros drank the water obediently, in silence. He swallowed a few more times, once he had finished, but he was not sick again. 

“Are you in pain?” Fingolfin asked. “Fingon left instructions, and a tonic, here—“

He stopped at the look on his nephew’s face. Maedhros, perhaps suddenly realizing his transparency, flushed self-consciously.

“The medicine does not help with the pain, it only—it makes me sleep.”

It was clear enough upon his face, how the thought of sleep distressed him still. 

“And yet we must help you back to sleep again somehow, or my son shall think me derelict in duty,” Fingolfin said, and smiled to cover his pity. “He chided me enough over perceived failings, you know, when he was a boy; I have only lately regained his good opinion, and would hate to lose it again.”

“I will take the tonic, then,” Maedhros said instantly, in a thin voice, and Fingolfin at once realized his mistake. He shook his head firmly. 

“Nonsense,” he said. “If you do not wish to drink it, I shall not force you. Fingon would not wish that of me, either—nor of you, Maedhros.”

He paused, considering. He knew, of course, how his own children had best been calmed after bad dreams and illness, but it still felt like presuming too much, to offer his brother’s son the same care. 

His brother was dead, and never returning. 

“Gwindor has told me that you find it helpful, sometimes, to listen to a friendly voice. If we set aside the medicine for now, would you be willing to have me sit with you, here, and talk for a little while?”

Jerkily, Maedhros nodded. Fingolfin folded over a little of the heaping pile of bedclothes, and sat down on the edge of the bed, one leg stretched out long, his other foot still resting upon the floor. He helped Maedhros ease back upon the pillows, but his nephew’s expression was still strained, rigid with some terrible pain or anxiety that Fingolfin did not dare to press. The sweat was still cold upon his brow, but Fingolfin did not dare to touch Maedhros’ face to wipe it away. 

Instead, he said: “Here, rest against me, if that will ease you.”

Hesitantly, Maedhros did. Fingolfin waited a moment, to give him time to settle. 

“Is this better?” He asked at last, and Maedhros—eyes closed now, though Fingolfin had not noticed when they shut—nodded his head, very slightly. 

“Yes. If you continue speaking—yes.”

“Excellent.” Fingolfin paused, at an abrupt loss. “Is there anything in particular you would like to hear?”

“Tell me more. About—about when Fingon was a boy.”

Fingon, a boy. Softly and immediately the dear old memories rose up to overwhelm him: his dark-haired, round-headed baby son; his blue-eyed, quarrelsome eldest child. As a newborn, Fingon had liked to grip his father’s forefinger, when he slept. At the age of four he had been obsessed for weeks with toasting bread, because he had realized that was one of the foods his mother could eat most easily, and it was one Fingolfin allowed him to help prepare. Plain toast and unsugared tea was, even now, one of Fingon’s favorite comfort foods; likely he did not remember the beginning of that particular fondness, but Fingolfin did. _Mama_ had been his first word; _Papa_ had been his seventh. _Papa, why?_ He had been fond of asking, cheerfully joining his seventh word with his third, and, even more enthusiastically: _Papa, no!_

The hired nurse had warned against allowing willful children to talk back in such a fashion, but Fingolfin had not followed her advice. When Fingon was small, every word had seemed a miracle, no matter how impertinent. 

“Most of my stories about Fingon have you in them,” he said, with a rueful smile which Maedhros of course did not see. “To tell you anything you do not already know, I must go back very far indeed, I think.”

He considered, then smiled again. 

“Fingon was very anxious, the week you came to live with your Grandfather,” he began. Maedhros lay very still, and did not open his eyes.

“We had just had a new coat made for him in anticipation of the Fall, and he insisted upon wearing it to your first meeting, never mind that it was still an inch too long in the sleeves. He even wore his hat—I do not know if you recall, but Fingon never let us put him in hats, when he was a child. He nearly strangled himself in ribbons, when he was six-months old, in his zest at removing his bonnets! But he actually _asked_ me for his hat, the day we went to welcome you and Maglor to the city. It was a navy wool, to match his new coat, still in its paper because I had been so convinced he would never wear it. But that little wool set was the finest clothing he owned, he was certain, and he wanted to impress you! I never saw him so agitated as when we stood at the river waiting for you to arrive with my father. I was—very grateful then. When you were so kind to him.”

“He was kind to me, first,” Maedhros said, softly. “I was desperately afraid that he would hate me—that he would think me an usurper, come to claim a position in the family that should have been his. But he—he took my hand, and walked me to the river, and began to teach me all about the waterbirds we could see there. I remember that.” 

He had not opened his eyes, but he had relaxed a little, against Fingolfin’s leg. He even made a small, short sound, that almost could have been a laugh, and added: “I remember the hat, too; he had to keep hold of it with one hand, for the breeze kept threatening to toss it in the water.”

“Fingon enjoyed birdwatching as a boy. It was—a family pastime. He became quite knowledgeable, before he turned his attention to medicine. I used to think he might be a naturalist, when he grew up. He was always inquisitive.”

He had almost said: _It was a hobby he shared with his mother._ But it would not do, to speak of Anaire now. 

“He—always enjoyed spending time with the animals,” Maedhros ventured. “—In Formenos, I mean.”

He paused, not even breathing, for a second or two. Then he swallowed, and went bravely on.

“He would—help me about the place. Feeding the livestock, and cleaning the stalls, and so on. He always claimed the job of fetching eggs from the henhouse, when he visited. Made Caranthir resent him, because—that was his task, you see. Caranthir is very proud of his tasks.”

Fingolfin gazed down at the ragged copper head leaned against his thigh, at the thin hand that had curled to rest brushed up against his trouser-leg, and swallowed down an unexpected lump of his own.

“I had not known that,” he said, “about the farm.”

“Mm. He was fond of my dog, too. Breena. She was Huan’s mother, you know. A grand, good dog.”

“Fingon did ask for a dog, when he was about fourteen,” Fingolfin recalled. “But we had no use for one, where we lived, and—the expense and attention a dog would have required of the household was too much. He resented me for it, I am sure.”

“I do recall him complaining to me about the affair, yes,” Maedhros murmured, apologetically. Fingolfin chuckled.

“Ah, well. I did sympathize with him, secretly, although I of course could not tell him at the time. When I was his age—all my boyhood, in fact—I had longed to own a cat. One of my school fellows used to leave a saucer out for a terrible mangy creature that paid him back by chasing the mice from his stables, and I used to play with it whenever I could contrive an excuse to visit. When it had a litter of kittens, I even asked my father—that is to say, I asked your grandfather, if I might bring one home. He said no, of course.”

“Did—Grandfather dislike cats? I never knew that.”

“Your father was allergic,” Fingolfin said, simply. 

How strange it was to be speaking of Feanor in this prosaic way, with the son Fingolfin had used to fear as a spy! Fingolfin had yet to ask at all about the circumstances of his brother’s death—he had learned, one way or another, that Maedhros had been there for the death, and for the fatal confrontation before that death, but he could not even wish to ask for details. 

He remembered still, too vividly, the way Maedhros’ fevered eyes had stared at him, the way his voice had shaken, when he mistakenly called him _Athair._

Maedhros had not even known the word for uncle, until his second Christmas dinner in Valinor Place. That was when Finwe had insisted upon calling Fingolfin to his chair to say _This is your Uncle Fingolfin, Maedhros. Can you say hello? Hello, Uncle? There, child, do not be bashful! Go on, give your uncle a kiss._

Fingolfin had excused himself before the beautiful little boy had offered the requested kiss, and had retired to bed early, to avoid any further interactions with his wide-eyed, bright-haired nephew. 

Feanor had been watching. 

Feanor still, Fingolfin supposed, might be watching.

“I think, sometimes, that I should have allowed Fingon that dog,” Fingolfin said quietly, tilting his head with a sigh. “So many years later, and I still feel sorry over it, at times! He was not always a responsible boy, nor wholly sensible, but he was kind, so I suppose he would have managed.” 

“He—is kind,” Maedhros repeated, very softly. 

Long ago, Fingolfin had seen Feanor stroking his baby son’s copper hair to soothe him, smoothing down those bright curls at his crown with his palm the way one might stroke a cat. Now, therefore, as Maedhros’ head drooped heavily against him, Fingolfin ran his fingers gently through the hair behind Maedhros’ ears, the way he had liked to do with his own babies as they fell asleep, and did not stroke at all. 

_He might not know you, if he wakes,_ Fingon had warned, in the hall. _It is—important, that you help him know you._

“Uncle,” Maedhros mumbled, drowsily—“If you had to yourself a kitten . . . a black kitten with white socks. What would you name him?” 

“A dapper little fellow, eh?” Fingolfin said, pleased to have Maedhros so engaged. He considered.

“I have always been fond of the name Thomas, for a cat. I very nearly chose Thomas to be Fingon’s christening name, did I ever tell you that? It was Anaire who insisted upon Antoine.”

“Quite right,” Maedhros whispered. The look of strain was still there about his closed eyes, but something like a smile flickered in the hollow of his cheek. 

*

When Fingon slipped into the room a few hours later, his color much improved and the headache banished by a few hours’ rest, he smiled to see them so tenderly arranged.

When he helped carefully to lift Maedhros a little and arrange him more comfortably upon the pillows, so that Fingolfin might extricate himself and depart to his own sleeping quarters, Maedhros did not stir. He had slept quietly for hours; he would sleep quietly for hours more.

“Did he wake at all?” Fingon whispered, as he walked Fingolfin to the door. Fingolfin’s hip ached, and his shoulder ached, to have stayed so long sitting on the bed with Maedhros asleep at his knee. He limped slightly, stiff, but a little walking would soon set him right.

“Only a little while,” he reassured Fingon, forcing a tired smile. “And he fell asleep again not long after.”

*

“Ah, I see,” Fingolfin said gravely a few days later, stroking the kitten’s nape gently with one finger. “Spot. So this one is—Grey?”

“Red,” Frog exclaimed, exasperated. Fingolfin blinked. 

“Ah,” he said again. He looked about the stable, seeking out the largest of the kittens. It had been Aredhel who had told him he ought to go out to see them, with the children; until she made the suggestion at breakfast that morning he had not known Mithrim had any cats at all. He had now made the acquaintance of Jib, the vain and mock-indifferent mother; learning the kittens’ names, however, was still a work in progress.

“That one is Tig-Pig,” he guessed, and Frog nodded approvingly, rubbing at his slightly running nose.

“Very good. So who is this little chap, then?” Fingolfin inquired, gesturing to the fourth kitten. Frog glanced at it, unimpressed.

“He’s Thomas,” said Frog. “He’s Russandol’s.”

The handsome little black kitten strutted up to him on four white-socked feet, and began to clamber obstinately up over his ankles.

Gently, Fingolfin llifted the kitten up into his arms, where it kneaded mulishly at his ragged waistcoat, regarding him with a wobbling curiosity.

“Hello, Thomas,” he said, softly.

Thomas batted at his spectacles.


End file.
